Related Summaries

IDC reports that although HTML5 has helped unify development efforts, it has also not been living up to expectations. Most notably, HTML5 projects with Facebook and LinkedIn have failed. "HTML5 and native mobile will coexist, neither displacing the other. Native application platforms will remain the primary way mobile applications will be delivered and run," for at least the next three years, IDC says.

The Financial Times' 2-year-old mobile application remains a strong driver of online revenues, accounting for about a third of the newspaper's online traffic and 15% of all digital subscriptions. That's a validation of the organization's decision to use HTML5 rather than native apps, says FT.com's managing director, Rob Grimshaw. "Most of the savvy developers have switched to HTML5, even if they're still delivering those apps in a native wrapper," he notes.

HTML5 game development platform Ludei launched its iBasket game on several platforms at once, fulfilling one of the major promises of HTML5, Ken Yeung writes. The game is coming to or already distributed by the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Marketplace, NOOK, Facebook, Firefox, and Chrome. "IBasket demonstrates the remarkable power we're placing in developers' hands -- to run HTML5 games with intricate animation and physics across multiple platforms, with native payment and ad support for each platform. Many people thought it couldn't be done, but our platform makes it a reality," Ludei CEO Eneko Knorr says.

Mozilla's Chris Heilmann, a developer evangelist for HTML5, has written a blog post that aims to debunk myths about HTML5, addressing monetization, performance and capabilities, among other issues. He makes valid points, but "when it comes to mobile users, the goal is for none of this to matter," Dan Rowinski writes in response. "If I want [to] use Firefox OS or HTML5 apps, I need to trust that those apps will work as well as the native versions I am already used to from the closed app store models."